Title: Nighttime Is My Time
Author: Mary Higgins Clark
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
First published: 2004
Finished reading: July 20th 2013
Pages: 434
I might not have read many books by Mary Higgins Clark, but until now they don’t really seem to enjoy me. Taking this Nighttime Is My Time as an example; it’s writing is too forced and the suspense she tries to build up so desperately only makes the story and the ending less satisfying. Mary Higgings Clark tries real hard to keep all the men on the suspect list at all cost… And I must say the whole trying not to reveal the name of the serial killer seems forced and not really believable. I actually became irritated to the point that I was wishing she would name the killer and just get it over with… So I guess I wouldn’t really recommend this book unless you want to end up feeling frustrated.
The story is about a twenty-year class reunion of the Stonecroft Academy where seven members are to be honored. Jean Sheridan is one of them and the main character of the book. There seems to be a curse hanging over Jean and her six female friends, since five of them have mysteriously died over the last twenty years. Only Jean and Laura Wilcox, the actress, are left after the last of five women drowned in her own pool only a few days before the reunion weekend. Jean has a really bad feeling about the whole weekend which is reinforced by an anonymous fax threatening her daughter Lily, a child she gave up for adoption twenty years ago… And not without cause, since the same serial killer that calls himself The Owl and that actually murdered the other five women is planning to finish the job that weekend. The women had humiliated him after a school play where he played an owl twenty years ago, and he feels they all have to be punished. Every important male attendant of the reunion is becoming suspect of being The Owl…
Mary Higgins Clark tried to keep us readers guessing at the identity of the killer until the end, but it makes the story less believable. And more importantly I ended up being so frustrated that I wanted the whole story just to be over with. True, the real identity of the serial killer was a slight surprise, but as a whole I wouldn’t read it again nor recommend it. Only unless you have absolutely nothing else to do and no access to a different book…
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